USA > Massachusetts > Hampshire County > Northampton > The Northampton book; chapters from 300 years in the life of a New England town, 1654-1954 > Part 17
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The 18th century shows faint foreshadowing of modern ways.
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Appropriations were made for opening schools in distant parts of the town. A taxpayer, typical no doubt, complained that he was not getting benefit for his children while paying for schooling of children of others. Perhaps he was accommodated by the first of the district schools, erected on "The Plain" (Bridge Street), where later stood the small red brick building where the robbers of the Northampton Bank hid their plunder.
At the crossing of the Lickingwater, now diverted from its course, and its onomatopoetic name become Mill River, a wooden building was erected and soon there were six other districts-one of which was lost to Easthampton when the Hamptons were sepa- rated.
In 1746 it was necessary to act again with regard to the wood- pile. It was ordered that every parent sending a boy to school must follow him with a load of wood within two weeks or pay Io shillings. The fuel question perpetually troubling school boards and city councils is evidently of ancient, if not very honorable origin.
For 105 years the schools were under the supervision of the selectmen. Now the school business took so much time that they appointed six leading citizens to have, with the selectmen, juris- diction over all the schools, a school committee in effect though not so named until 10 years later. Their power to control the school was absolute: to consider "how many schools it may be necessary to keep from now until plowing time," to hire and pay teachers, and to spend what money was required without restric- tion. Colonel Timothy Dwight and Mr. Joseph Hawley ordered "to project some way that our schools may be made more advan- tageous and profitable" reported that "a new schoolhouse should be erected that shall be very warm and convenient for writers, grammar scholars and arithmeticians." Two schoolmasters should be maintained.
When the town became concerned with fire prevention, special precautions were ordered for the schools. No master was to be engaged unless he would promise to see that the fires, in fireplaces, of course, were extinguished at night. Failure to perform this duty resulted in dismissal. To double assurance the selectmen were authorized to engage some person living near the school- house and Lickingwater to care for the buildings and "see that the preceptors obey orders of the Town respecting fires." Clear
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evidence that the despotic power of janitors was given when the office was created.
Until the last years of the 18th century all school legislation concerns boys. Leading citizens sent their daughters to Boston for education and there were private schools from time to time. In the dame schools girls were taught to sew and small boys to read. Sewing was the all-important part of a girl's education and it is easy to suspect that the masters' inability to teach sewing was one reason for the delay in admitting girls to the public schools.
A warrant for admitting females to the Lickingwater school was dropped when it was found that those to be benefitted did not desire the permission.
An act of 1792 admitting girls to the public schools was not taken advantage of and in 1799 no appropriation was made. In the 1780's the Proprietors' school, organized by 13 leading citi- zens, experimented in coeducation. Only children of the Proprie- tors were admitted, a teacher was imported from England and both boys and girls were taught reading, writing, spelling, arith- metic, and geography. Boys were taught Latin and all studied French. The experiment was short-lived.
The exact date when girls were admitted to the schools is not known but it was certainly after 1803, when four young women were appointed to teach in the Town and the Lickingwater schools the opportunities for girls have been equal to those for boys. Mrs. Olive Cleveland Clarke in a thin pamphlet, "Things That I Remember at Ninety-five," written in 1881, tells of her cousins' going to Williamsburg for schooling not obtainable in Northampton. H. S. Gere in his reminiscences tells of an unhappy father of a large family of girls who was grieved because he had to pay for the education of other men's boys while his girls had to go without.
Mrs. Clarke taught in the Town school in 1807-8 just before her marriage. My grandmother, born in 1803, was one of her pupils. My sisters and I were taken to see "Aunt Olive," as she was called by our neighbors, in her hundredth year. We were made guiltily conscious of our scholastic shortcomings when she looked at us with sharp little black eyes which seemed to spy out our un- worthiness and said, "I remember your grandmother, Patty Rus- sell, she was a bright little girl and always knew her lessons."
What lack in the Northampton schools sent some girls to the
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newly opened Amherst Academy, among them my two grand- mothers, I do not know. Both were infallible in spelling, not taught until well on in the 18th century, drilled in the hardest and rarest words. Their handwriting was clear and neat, for that was taught as an art from the beginning, "writers" in all the early school acts meaning penmanship. They knew the Bible from their early days and read it constantly; their sewing and knitting were perfection; they read widely and kept an interest in current events. One was interested in geography and exploration, the other especially in history and biography. Both knew much poetry and quoted passages from Goldsmith, Cowper, Watts, and others adding Scott and Burns, later, to their memorized store.
Instead of Amherst Academy they might have attended the School of Miss Ann Clarke on Pleasant Street; one lived next door to this ambitious private school. In the Hampshire Gazette of March 28, 1810, Miss Clarke announces the opening on May first, 1810-relic of the custom of allowing girls to attend the public school in the summer-for "the purpose of instructing young misses ... in reading, writing, English Grammar, Geography, plain and fine needlework, all kinds of embroidery, tambour, fili- gree, drawing and painting, using charts and maps." Ann Clarke was a strong-minded woman in a day when that was a term of reproach. She believed that women should have the right to vote, wore what in that time were regarded as short skirts, and trav- eled about the country, even so far as Ohio, giving lectures upon history and travel allustrated by colored lantern slides known as "sliders."
Forerunner of our two preparatory schools was the well- known Gothic Seminary kept by Miss Margaret Dwight, great- granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards. In her home on King Street she had taught her sisters so well that parents begged her to give their girls the benefit of her teaching. The school grew and in 1834 a number of citizens bought land on Tappan's Lane, put up a romantic "Gothic" building, and established Miss Dwight in what came to be known as the best private school in Western Massachusetts. The lane became Gothic Street when Northamp- ton streets were officially named in the 1840's. The enrollment in 1840 was 95. There were a primary and a secondary department. The senior girls were offered Latin, French, music, vocal and piano, the English subjects, study of the Bible, and, "the higher
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accomplishments." Native teachers of foreign languages were borrowed from Round Hill and calisthenics, unusual at the time, were probably an influence from that progressive institution. The school was carried on for four years after Miss Dwight's death in 1849. Improvement in the public schools helped to lessen the at- tendance and the Gothic building awaited other adventures in education.
The experiment known as "The Round Hill School" attracted wide attention at the time and has had an important and lasting influence upon American educational practice. George Bancroft and Joseph Cogswell teaching at Harvard found that their stu- dents were totally unprepared for the work which should be re- quired by a university. Cogswell had travelled much abroad and was impressed by the efficiency of German methods. In the be- lief that the best of European culture and educational thought could be brought to American education, the two young men were encouraged to study in Germany; Bancroft's training was paid for by Harvard.
After their return and the introduction of the new methods, the result was unsatisfactory to both their Harvard colleagues and themselves. A school of their own seemed the only way to put into practice what they had learned. Encouraged by Boston friends with approval and money they looked for a site and found exactly what they wanted on a "slight eminence near Northamp- ton." The school opened on October first, 1823, with 15 boarders and 10 day scholars. Only boys from nine to twelve were de- sired and boys from other schools were not welcome. The school term covered the whole year with three weeks' vacation at the winter and summer solstices. Kindness and persuasion were to be used instead of corporal punishment at a time when the rod was not spared in the training of youth. English, the ancient lan- guages and four modern, history, geography, mathematics, read- ing, and composition formed the curriculum. All students must learn Latin "that language essential to a practical education." French was taught by a native speaker, a rare instance at the time. A unique feature, the one most noted, was gymnastics required as part of the curriculum, Round Hill's lasting contribution to our system of education. A gymnast from Europe was imported as instructor. Hardihood and manliness were inculcated. Long
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expeditions on foot, excursions to the mountains and points of in- terest were frequent.
Cogswell, to whom fell the management of the school, led these expeditions. He was much loved by the boys. John Spencer Bas- sett in Round Hill School gives him credit for the organization and conduct of the school. He regards Cogswell as a greater man than Bancroft, though without Bancroft's capacity for doing things that tell.
Bancroft was not loved by the boys nor did he love them. They took advantage of his nearsightedness, mocked his mannerisms, and, when he fell asleep in class, read aloud from some less edify- ing books than those prescribed, though pupils later admitted that as a teacher of Greek he was superior. Evidently the ould deluder was active even at Round Hill.
At its highest prosperity the school had 135 pupils. The tuition was $300 a year when $250 was regarded as sufficient for neces- sary expenses at Harvard.
Bancroft sold his interest to Cogswell in 1830 and Cogswell carried on for three years. The attendance fell off, expenses were too heavy and the school closed. Educationally it more than ful- filled its plan. It has been said paradoxically that its failure was due to its success. Bassett believes that the education at Round Hill was as good as a college education a hundred years ago. Boys of thirteen usually entered the junior, sometimes the senior class at Yale or Harvard. As students paid for the whole four-year course in those days whether they took it or not parents were un- willing to pay for instruction not received.
Contemporary with Round Hill Northampton's one profes- sional school, the law school of Judge Samuel Howe and Elijah Hunt Mills, existed from 1823 to 1830. It ranked first among the law schools of the country and had distinguished graduates, Franklin Pierce among them.
A later school for boys was the Collegiate Institute kept by Mr. Lewis J. Dudley in the Gothic building which had housed Miss Dwight's seminary. Mr. Dudley had taught Greek and Latin at Yale using methods of his own which have become standard now. At first a tutoring school for boys rusticated from Yale it became a regular preparatory school. The pupils were largely southern- ers, though a few Northampton boys were day scholars, and the Civil War brought the school to an end.
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Clarke School for the Deaf was fostered in its early years in the Gothic building. Mr. Dudley's expenditure of time, money, and strength secured from the legislature the charter for the school. It was the first school in the country to teach oral speech to the deaf. The charts invented here for the teaching are known every- where as the Northampton charts. It is owing to Mr. Dudley's interest in oral speech that deaf children are no longer called dumb.
Inspired by the infant school movement in England a school for children from two to six years old opened on Elm Street in May, 1831, but lasted only a year. The first real kindergarten, one of very few in the country, was established in the Florence section of Northampton by Mr. Samuel Hill. He had become interested in Froebel's theories and studied their possibilities for the bene- fit of his home town. Elizabeth Peabody counseled him and came by his invitation to lecture in Cosmian Hall on the Froebelian philosophy. The experiment was first made with 16 children in Mr. Hill's parlor. Pending the opening of a new building, gift of Mr. Hill, school was held in lower Cosmian Hall. Until 1891 when the Leland Stanford Memorial Kindergartens were estab- lished it was the only endowed kindergarten in the country. Even now the Hill School is one of the few kindergartens in the coun- try which has a building especially planned for its needs, with lawns and spacious playgrounds. Mr. Hill's endowment also sup- ported a well-attended evening technical school where manual training was first taught in Northampton and cooking and sewing classes were well patronized.
The development of our public schools in these years of ven- turesome experiment and daring innovation is well documented. Almost complete files of the annual reports of the school com- mittee are kept in the Office of the Superintendent of Schools and in Forbes Library.
The first superintendent of schools was Denzel M. Crane, a member of the school committee, appointed when it was found that school affairs required the full time of a "single man."
The example of the famed private schools must have broadened the minds of teachers in the public schools and parents supporting them. The influence of Horace Mann is indicated by a conven- tion of the County schools at Amherst in 1842. In that year the town appropriated $4000 for the high and district schools. North-
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ampton paid about $4.27 for each pupil when the average through- out the state was $2.70. The early reports show concern for the quality of the teaching and recommend special teachers of music, penmanship (taught at one time by J. G. Holland) ; school terms, school hours, and truancy are discussed to be later acted upon.
Even during the Civil War plans for a new high school build- ing were forming and in 1864 the old grammar school building, which stood on the present South Street boulevard, was torn down. Payson Williston and other patriotic citizens contributed money, an equal amount was given by the town, and soon a new building was ready. This building, third on the site, was brick of three stories, the high school occupying the top floor. Called the Town School it occupied space between the present Hawley Grammar and the yellow brick building of 1898 now "the old high school."
The superintendent's report of the year 1884 epitomizes fairly well the schools of the '80's and early '90's. There were three women on the school committee. George B. Drury, superintend- ent and treasurer, was far-sighted, with sound educational ideas. His report is clearly and interestingly written. Facing the de- mand for the employment of town girls as teachers he says that he has had many applications from "young ladies many of them women of excellent character and well-educated, they fail in not knowing how to teach." He solved the problem by arranging to allow a few girls just out of high school to teach in the primary grades under the direction of an experienced teacher, for a small fee. This primitive training school was carried on in the Center Street school, on the site of a building which had been the boys' high school and later was shared by girls until the building on New South Street was put up. It now serves as the Police Station.
Mr. Drury believed in Normal Schools; he fixes the age when children should begin school, advocates special teachers for draw- ing and penmanship, and refers to a vote to establish a truant school, passed, but never acted upon. He regards the law provid- ing free text books as unwise and unjust but is as modern as to- day in attributing "evil behavior" in the young to the "lack of parental restraint." He records 17 graduates from the high school the previous year, seven from the English-the old "readers and writers," and ten from the "Grammar scholars," now the classical course, of whom three entered Smith College and three Amherst.
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These reports are landmarks in the history of our public schools for more than a century. Mr. Cornish in the first meeting house with the Bible and Psalter would not understand even the vocabu- lary of our modern attack on the ould deluder. The multitude of our varied weapons would bewilder him. But underlying all the school legislation, catalogues, prospectuses, and programs put forth in this "center of intelligence" in language not so quaint, the adversary not so specifically named is the same intent: "that learning may not be buried in the graves of our fathers in the church and commonwealth."
Chapter Twenty-Two
The Origin and Development of the Parochial School System
By FREDERICK D. MEEHAN
F OR over two centuries Northampton remained predomi- nantly of English origin and of the Protestant faith. Today, however, with the influx of other nationalities-Irish, French, Polish, Italian-the Catholic population which began to settle here during the middle of the 19th century constitutes more than one-third of the city's inhabitants.
It was largely the influx of the various foreign nationalities that made up the steady growth in Northampton's population until it leveled off in 1920, in the absence of local industries' expansion in recent decades. The city's Parochial School System, established under the direction of the Roman Catholic Church in 1891 to serve the needs of the growing Catholic population, has expanded from approximately 15 per cent of the school children to today's 28 per cent of the entire school population.
It was from its foreign-born Irish and French roots that the local Parochial School System grew, operated under the direction of the Roman Catholic Church, which feels that such education unites intellectual, moral, and religious elements in a balanced training of youth for citizenship, and that religious instruction is a basic element in the educational program of the child and youth. Of the three district parochial systems in Northampton, St. Michael's on State Street, Sacred Heart on King Street, and An- nunciation on Beacon Street in Florence, the first two were es- tablished in 1891.
Father P. V. Moyce was the first Catholic priest in the city, and upon his death, Father Michael E. Barry was assigned as a pastor in 1872. At that time the church, a small wooden structure, was located on King Street, just south of the railroad underpass.
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Father Barry, until his death in 1899, was held in great esteem by all religious denominations of the community. A man of intellect, he served as one of the first members of the Northampton Com- mittee System under which the city's public schools have been operated since 1866. An excellent businessman, by sound invest- ments he accumulated over $32,000, a considerable sum for that time, and made St. Mary's Church, which he had built, and the members of the parish, heirs to a generous bequest. It was with such funds, and the sound economic condition in which Father Barry closed his pastorate, that his successor, Father John Ken- ney, could undertake a parochial education for the children of the parish.
In 1891, former Mayor John B. O'Donnell purchased, on be- half of the church, the then famous Shady Lawn property, a large Gothic structure, and two adjoining buildings, for $22,500. The property was considered one of the beauty spots of Northampton. Built in 1835, until 1848 it had housed an early school for girls- the "Gothic Seminary." Later the property was purchased by Lewis J. Dudley, and became the home of a private boys' school, accommodating 75 students-"The Northampton Collegiate In- stitute"-from 1849-1862. It was a place for the instruction of teachers of deaf students in 1869-70, actually the start of the now famous Clarke School; and for 15 subsequent years the main building was rented by an early psychiatrist, Dr. A. W. Thomp- son, as a hospital for the care of inebriates and mental cases.
When the Shady Lawn buildings were purchased for a paro- chial school, they had been in use over half a century. Extensive alterations were made by Father Kenney. The residence of Dr. Dudley was converted into a convent for the religious. On Sep- tember 8, 1891, the school was formally opened under the direc- tion of the Sisters of the Order of St. Joseph. Normally a parochial school is named after its parish, but Father Kenney felt that the name of the new school, in St. Mary's parish, should be "St. Mi- chael's School," in memory of Father Michael Barry who had done so much to make its founding a reality. The enrollment the first year was 225; of these, less than one-tenth were high school students.
In the same year the Sacred Heart parish began its school for French families of that parish. As late as 1870 there were not more than 60 French families in Northampton. Father Rainville, the
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first pastor, was sent here in 1886, practically in the role of a mis- sionary. He was able to raise $9000 for the construction of a chapel in 1891. The main floor of the structure, which still stands, served as a church while the basement, or first floor, provided the school's early facilities. Father Rainville's purpose was twofold: the preservation of the French language among the youth of the parish, and the development of future priests and sisters. The stu- dent body when the school opened was 95 students, distributed fairly equally through the 9 elementary grades.
After a survey of public schools in the fall of 1891, the North- ampton Superintendent of Schools, Mr. Alvin Pease, reported to the school committee: "The number of scholars since the open- ing of the Parochial Schools has been diminished as follows: Wil- liams Street, Center Street, and Hospital Hill, one-half; North King, one-third; some from Bridge Street and Elm Street; enough from South Street North to prevent the opening of the South Street School." The initial drop in attendance in the public schools was proportionate to the number entering the Parochial schools of St. Michael's and Sacred Heart-children of the religious faith of a large segment of the recent immigrant settlers in Northamp- ton.
In less than 15 years the enrollment of St. Michael's School in- creased from 225 students in 1891 to 330 students in 1905. The grade school had outgrown its Shady Lawn facilities. In 1909 an imposing brick structure, many windowed, built at the cost of $50,000, was completed on the State Street side of the original school. It contained six classrooms on each floor, besides an office for the Mother Superior, the teachers' room, a record office, and a dining room. The enrollment in 1909 was 354; 406 in 1910; 464 in 1914, five years after the new school was opened. The building is now known as St. Michael's Grammar School.
Meanwhile, from the outset in 1891, Father Rainville of the Sacred Heart Parish had realized that his school facilities were not adequate, but neither the financial condition nor the member- ship of his church permitted more suitable quarters until the num- ber of his parishioners had risen to approximately 1600 at the turn of the century. Believing that a new school for adequate religious and educational training of the children was of greater need than a new church structure, the Sacred Heart Parish opened a newly- built attractive six-room school building in September 1911.
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Though the building is at present over 40 years old, it still is in usable condition.
The population of Northampton increased from 14,990 in 1890 to 24,95 1 in 1920, then leveled off, and many of the city's new- comers gradually moved to Florence and its environs to be near their places of employment. By 1879 there were sufficient Catho- lic residents in Florence to form a parish, and the Annunciation Church was erected in 1880, with Father Callery as pastor.
In September 1926, under Father James A. O'Malley, a mod- ern brick building consisting of six fire-proof rooms was opened as the Annunciation School in Florence. The initial enrollment of 108 students grew to 236 by 1930. In 1936 a two-story building was acquired and has since been used both as a parish community center and an adjunct to the school, where moving pictures, plays, socials, scouting, and other activities are held. Three years later, a one-story brick building was added to the property, and was opened in 1940 for members of the Ist and 2nd grades. The location of the school building affords ample playground space. The school's enrollment of 250 or more in 1937-39 dropped to 2 10 in the World War II years of 1942-43, rose again to over 240 in 1948-49, and the enrollment for 1952-53 is 294, the highest since the school's opening.
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